Variety of people made an impact

Runner-up, finalists showed community commitment

Dick Barrett

2012 Person of the Year Runner-Up: Dick Barrett: Helped make Wausau a sports destination

As the driving force behind the Sports Authority for the Wausau/Central Wisconsin Convention & Visitors Bureau, Barrett has helped Wausau to expand its reputation as a destination for sports tournaments - and has significantly contributed to the region's economic development in the process.

Barrett was an instrumental part of orchestrating more than 30 sporting events in the Wausau area in 2012, among them the Midwest Freeze Hockey Invite & Expo, Team USA Ice Fishing and the first-ever Wausau Marathon.

This year, for the first time, the Badger State Games were entirely locally owned, after the rights to the event were purchased by the Convention & Visitors Bureau. The broad-based community Winter Games turned a profit. They were followed in June by the Summer Games, which were held in Wausau for the first time ever.

Barrett's work with the Sports Authority has made a difference.

Karen Kellbach

In February, a neighborhood group approached Wausau City Council member Karen Kellbach about problems there. Residents felt that their neighborhood was becoming truly unsafe. Houses with broken-out windows had visitors going in and out all day long, leading observers to suspect the homes were centers of drug dealing and potential violence.

Kellbach stepped up. She convened meetings that brought together the neighborhood groups, representatives of the Wausau Police Department, Mayor Jim Tipple and other officials. In the process, she became a leader in a community-driven effort to reclaim city neighborhoods that had fallen into disrepair.

Information from the community groups led to multiple drug arrests this year. And it also sparked a larger movement in the way Wausau is policed. The city is a safer place and residents are more empowered because of the effort Kellbach led.

Cal Tillisch and Corey Sandquist

The new, $4.2 million Wausau Curling Center puts Wausau on the map as a leader in curling. Wausau will be a destination for top-level curling competitions - bonspiels, as they are known - as well as, perhaps, Olympic trials.

The new facility, which boasts eight sheets of ice, was built with donated money, labor and materials. Credit for that effort goes to the whole of the Wausau Curling Club, and especially to Cal Tillisch and Corey Sandquist, co-chairmen of the club's fundraising committee. The facility can lay claim to being the best curling-specific facility (no hockey on this ice) in the country - and maybe the world.

Jim McIntyre, Keith Montgomery, Lane Ware, Gerald Whitburn

When the Medical College of Wisconsin announced it would open a new medical school campus in central Wisconsin, the three finalists - Wausau, Stevens Point and Marshfield - all jumped at the chance to attract the economic development the site would bring.

In Wausau, the key to that pitch was the work, jointly, of Greenheck Fan Corp. CEO Jim McIntyre, University of Wisconsin Marathon County dean Keith Montgomery, Ruder Ware law firm chairman Lane Ware and former Church Mutual Insurance CEO Gerald Whitburn.

That group succeeded in making the case that Wausau could offer the best home for the college's central Wisconsin location. And while the college won't open until 2015, the fact that it chose Wausau was a significant event this year - and might be even more so in the future.

James and Melissa Lecker

Wausau's two-dog limit made national news when James and Melissa Lecker decided to speak up about it rather than simply keep quiet about their dogs. And what could have been a private dispute between a resident and a municipal government turned into a raging community conversation about our obligations toward animals.

In fact, that conversation triggered a series of policy changes. Most recently, Wausau approved a plan to hire a full-time and two part-time humane officers, who will help to get a handle on animal control and respond to animal abuse complaints in Wausau and other Marathon County municipalities.

The work of officials such as City Council member Keene Winters and the members of a citizen commission enacted the changes. Still, none of it would have been possible without the spark provided by the Leckers.

James Fust

The Man of Honor Society is an organization founded by Fust to serve local veterans and their families in times of need. This year, the organization brought back to Wausau the traveling replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.

The wall, which the Man of Honor Society previously brought to Wausau in 2008, cost more than $10,000 to bring here and attracted tens of thousands of visitors. The traveling version is 80 percent the size of its counterpart in Washington, and is a deeply moving tribute to relatively recent war dead. It provided a moving and memorable experience to all who visited it at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 388 on River Drive in Wausau.

Honorable mentions

Darrell Keaton, founder, Men & Women for Social Change: Keaton, 41, launched a new organization designed to mentor young black people in the community, making Wausau a place that is more welcoming of diversity and a richer, better city.

State Sen. Jerry Petrowski, R-Stettin: In a year marked by elections and more elections, Petrowski, a longtime Assembly representative, won a June recall election to become a state senator.

Keene Winters, Wausau City Council member: Winters fought for greater oversight of the city budget process by City Council and won. He also helped advocate for real changes in the way Wausau city government is run.

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Variety of people made an impact

As the driving force behind the Sports Authority for the Wausau/Central Wisconsin Convention & Visitors Bureau, Barrett has helped Wausau to expand its reputation as a destination for sports

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